Design Observer :: Join the Discussion http://places.designobserver.com/feature/how-to-be-an-architecture-critic/32278/ en-us Design Observer Group 2012-03-19T22:34:04-05:00 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0
As for the discussion above about Huxtable's criticism lackin political/sociological...etc...aspects, I understand the Four Points Lange makes to satisfy these needs. Indeed, from the excerpts posted above, Huxtable does not include too much discourse involving the socio-economic / political issues, but I think it's fair to say her style and her priorities are her own.

As a critic myself, following the Four Points [Description, History, Drama and The Point], I think these issues can be included in this format, their subcomponents being;

1. Description [a. Aesthetics, b. Social Dynamic]
2. History [a. Economic Hist., b. Political Hist.]
3. Drama [a. Poetry, b. Pathos/Humour]
4. and lastly, The Point.]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/how-to-be-an-architecture-critic/32278/#comments 2012-03-19T22:34:04-05:00
These 'citizen critics' are a stand in for the obvious blogger and if Ms. Lange thinks what we need is more blogger-types, she is unfortunately wrong, but more incredibly out of touch.

It's not radical to give society the burden of producing good criticism as a bottom-up superficial approach, rather it is radical for society to trust a critic who allows them to work through given material, through an understanding of language and audience. As an architecture critic, I believe that criteria is possibly the only way to achieve a radical form of criticism. It's not paternalistic, its socially relevant to give people the tools to understand, not dumb down your criticism to bring it to their level. That is irresponsible.

Whether that is explicitly stated makes no difference, since her assumption of the thematization of types of architectural criticism as a good thing, presupposes that this is the way 'people' receive pertinent information. If anything, these generalities push architectural criticism away from doing any actual work, and, subsequently, creating an educated audience.

I hope that Ms. Lange understands she is right that we need a change in how architectural criticism is currently practiced and received, but she is also completely wrong in how we are supposed to do that. ]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/how-to-be-an-architecture-critic/32278/#comments 2012-03-16T23:51:24-05:00
It is a relief to have a writer at the NYT who can see patterns of life at all kinds of scales.

Another wonderful architecture critic who can sum up the qualities of a place or a structure with a few well-chosen words is Donlyn Lyndon whose architectural guide to Boston from the early '80s is a book I return to again and again.]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/how-to-be-an-architecture-critic/32278/#comments 2012-03-06T13:03:55-05:00 http://places.designobserver.com/feature/how-to-be-an-architecture-critic/32278/#comments 2012-03-06T11:38:05-05:00
What tosh. You claim that the Sydney 'architectural criticism' is the 'more direct and vital form of spatial critique' when compared with Huxtable's. This hardly seems adequately proven. What you've shown is that a political critique is an important form of architectural criticism. Fine. But why should this also show that a seemingly apolitical (although subtly political) critique like Huxtable's is a 'meaningless' sort of criticism?

Further, it's not at all clear what you mean by 'social dynamics' that give form to the spaces as the topic Huxtable is supposed to have left unmentioned. Do you mean 'how people interact in the space in question'? Or do you mean something more sociological? If you mean the former, Huxtable does discuss the way that people move, interact, what they see, in the space in question. In which case, her piece fulfills your criterion. If you mean the latter, as I implied, that's a sociological criticism. And while sociological criticisms have their places (the Sydney tower, e.g.), so do more broadly aesthetic ones like Huxtable's.

But if your thesis here is simply that aesthetic criticisms, or aesthetics in general, need to take a backseat to politics, well, good luck convincing anyone of that - let alone anyone reading a design blog.]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/how-to-be-an-architecture-critic/32278/#comments 2012-03-06T02:20:40-05:00
What a wonderful example of the kind of 'criticism' we don't need - the kind that prioritises the formal qualities of extension as the most important thing we could say about space. Never mind the social dynamics that give form to the space, or the various spacial politics that are played out on a daily basis in urban areas around the world.

For instance, on November 9 2011 in Sydney, a city in which many residents are suffering from some of the highest rental prices in the world, a group of squatters dropped one of several banners from a 7 story CBD office building that read "120,000 unoccupied buildings in Sydney". Inside they had been in the process of trying to establish a collection of small scale community services to help counter the otherwise dominant corporatisation of the city landscape.

Is this move in itself not already a more direct and vital form of spatial critique than what we see in the ordinary discourse of architecture? If citizens can learn any lessons from 'architecture criticism' surely the most important is that architecture writing is meaningless without politics. ]]> http://places.designobserver.com/feature/how-to-be-an-architecture-critic/32278/#comments 2012-03-05T03:46:28-05:00